Conventionally, belts used in the image forming devices such as electronic photographic systems included conveyance belts for carrying recording media, photoreceptor belts for carrying developing agent images and intermediate transfer belts.
These belts are generally continuous belts that are suspended over a plurality of support rollers including drive rollers and are known to shift due to the occurrence of biasing forces in the lateral direction of the belts due to the shifts in the degree of alignment caused by tolerance in components and circumferential differences at both ends of the belt.
A shift regulating member projected inside at the end of the inner circumferential face of the belt is installed along the circumferential longitudinal direction, and an engagement member that engages with the shift regulating member is located at the position facing the shift regulating member at least on one of the support rollers over which the belt is suspended such that the shift regulating member and the engagement member are engaged to regulate shifting of belts.
A developing agent and paper powder tend to be easily adhered on the belt. In order to remove these particles, in other conventional systems, a cleaning member is brought into contact with the outer circumferential face of the belt to remove adhered substances such as developer and paper powder that have adhered to the belt.
However, for example, when using such a cleaning member, due to shifts of the degree of alignment between the cleaning member and the support roller, the application of force is generated to shift the belt so that even though a technology to prevent shifting of the belt is applied, there is a danger that the running of the belt becomes unstable.
This phenomenon occurs not only with cleaning members, but it also occurs when stress are applied to the running belts as in the case when a plurality of drums are in contact at the same time.